Posted
by
timothy
on Friday February 14, 2014 @09:02PM
from the top-down-under dept.

New submitter aberglas writes "The conservative government's George Brandis wants to force ISPs to block sites that might infringe copyright. Brandis said he stood firmly on the side of content creators (a.k.a. Hollywood). Ban gross violators today, obscure ones tomorrow, porn sites, far left sites the day after..." From the article, too, this snippet: "The federal government is also considering implementing a "graduated response scheme" that could lead to consumers' internet accounts being temporarily suspended if they ignore notifications to stop downloading illegal content." Shades of the Copyright Alert System.

Lately there have been so many shitty movies out of hollyweird that I can't find anything worth downloading. It's a massive waste of bandwidth. I finally figured out that is how they are combating piracy now. The films suck so bad that no one wants to watch them even if they're free.

I'm David Adams. I've written and published 30+ books across various pen names and platforms, including compendiums, omnibuses, etc. I self-publish and it's been my livelihood for 17 months. I'm no Hugh Howey but I do okay.

Every single time that copyright infringement comes up, it's always in the context of Hollywood. Indie writers, singers, artists, producers... we never get a single mention. It's always all about Hollywood. Every time a tariff is discussed, a new law is proposed, it's always protecting a US industry explicitly. I would never see any money from any of the protection schemes suggested by my elected representatives, and if there's not direct funding involved, the suggested courses of action would only ever hurt me.

My questions for Mr. Brandis, not that he gives a flying fuck about me, are:

- Why Hollywood? Why are you not helping out our local artists? Is it because we don't donate flaming dump-trucks full of money to your re-election campaigns, and if so, don't you feel that you're actively selling out your local entertainment industries? Shouldn't you be representing *my* interests?- Why are you focusing on copyright infringement, something I give zero fucks about and even actively encourage? if you don't buy my book, I'd rather you got it from The Pirate Bay than passed on it, and I make lots of books free to encourage their proliferation anyway. Why fix something that's not broken?- As TFS and TFA indicate, this power is sweeping and applies to a lot more than just copyright. The last time the Federal Government tried this, under the banner of child pornography, it was shown (when the list was inevitably leaked) that many more websites were being blocked than simply child fiddling. Innocuous, offensive (but legal), personal grudges... the works. I struggle to believe that this time would be any different, and such blocks are trivial to bypass anyway. Why would you support a system that's fundamentally broken?

Previous attempts to push this stuff have come from opposition or independents with "balance of power" votes. Both major parties for the last 20yrs have used this issue as "bait" for independents, the promise of "inquiry" is normally enough to buy the independents vote, all reasonable observers know the inquiry will go nowhere. This time the push is coming from the federal attorney general, this is something very different and more credible than all the other failed attempts combined. Brandis makes Cheney look like a socialist, his push breaks the 20yr long good/bad cop routine the majors parties have played to screw independents out of their vote (an enemy of my enemy and all that...)

The last mob were merely incompetent, this lot are malicious and openly hostile to anyone who earns a wage or has a science degree. The "Abbot faction" of senior ministers in this government are all riding the same ideological wrecking ball. They are that far from "reasonable" that even Barnaby is sounding sensible in comparison. Turnbull is not one of the inner circle, when Tony falters, Malcom will eat him alive, when that happens we can go back to the normal incompetence we have come to expect from both sides.